The present invention relates to a system and method for calculating a movement direction and position of an unmanned vehicle used in, e.g., a factory to carry out a running control for the unmanned vehicle.
Unmanned vehicles for automatically conveying various parts, materials, and so on have been used within limited spaces such as factories to move them from one working station to another therein.
A Japanese Patent Application First Publication Sho No. 60-17306 published on Jan. 29, 1985 exemplifies such a system for calculating the movement direction and position of the unmanned vehicle in which line-formed or spot-formed sensible markers are installed on a running road surface of a floor or wall surface and a photo-sensitive element and movement controller are installed in the unmanned vehicle to detect such markers and calculate the movement direction and position of the own unmanned vehicle.
However, since in such a system as disclosed in the above-identified Japanese Patent Application publication the markers need to be installed on the road surfaces (or ground surface) and wall surfaces, the markers need to be installed again on such places as described above when a layout inside the factory is changed or when a new part of factory is extended to the factory (extension of a scale of factory). In addition, environment maintenance against dirty and contamination is extremely troublesome.